But we have said that the home must at any given time provide those material and creature comforts which the individual cannot secure through other channels. Because of their recognition and acceptance of this fact, women are doing and will probably continue for a long time to do work of which they might be relieved. It is common to think of this work as necessary because of the mechanical difficulties lying in the way of public housekeeping for the benefit of private home-making. As a matter of fact, most of the difficulties of this kind have been removed. Food can be prepared satisfactorily in much larger quantities than it is in private houses. This is proved by the quality of the food that is served in first-class hotels, restaurants, and clubs. There is a greater cleanliness than that of private homes. This is proved by the fact that surgeons insist upon performing operations in hospitals, where the cleaning is done by specialists under expert direction. A few problems, those involved in the satisfactory transportation of cooked food, for example, remain to be solved, but these seem small when considered in connection with the inventive skill shown in other industrial enterprises. The real difficulty in the way is, of course, social rather than mechanical. There seems no doubt that by general agreement among the housekeepers of a given community to avail themselves more largely than at present of the results of modern industrial development, radical changes could be made in the form of the home and in its activities without decreasing the comfort and enjoyment of home life. Perhaps the only real danger to the home lies in the fact that women, who are its natural protectors, are not free to control the industrial changes which affect it, and that these changes are being determined too largely by commercial interests. Experience has shown that women have had only a passive part in the removal of industries from the home, and that business enterprises have had a very active part. It has shown, also, that these changes have not been followed as speedily as they should have been by legislation necessary for the control of the industries under their new conditions. How slowly, for example, the Pure Food Law followed the factory method of preparing foods! Women must be freer to work in the interest of the home and of the children. They must be free from unnecessary labor and care within the home, and able to work for it in public; they must be free economically, and able to control their own incomes and to make experiments for themselves in new methods of housekeeping; they must be free politically, and able to control, by means of the ballot, public methods of preparing and transporting food, of caring for streets, of educating children, and of doing other work which affects the welfare of the home.